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Monday, September 2, 2013

Vatican
City, 1 September 2012 (VIS) – This morning Pope-emeritus Benedict
XVI celebrated Holy Mass in the Chapel of the Governorate of Vatican
City State, to mark the conclusion of the traditional summer seminar
held by the Ratzinger Circle of Alumni, the so-called “Ratzinger
Schulerkreis”. The meeting took place in Castel Gandolfo but
Benedict XVI did not participate this year. The 38th edition of the
Ratzinger Schulerkreis examined the theme “The question of God
against the background of secularisation” in the light of the
theological work of the thinker Remi Brague, who was awarded last
year's Ratzinger Prize for theology.

Holy
Mass was attended by around fifty people, and Benedict XVI
concelebrated with the cardinals Kurt Koch, president of the
Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and Christoph
Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, Austria; the archbishops Georg
Ganswein, prefect of the Papal Household, and Barthelemy Adoukonou,
secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture; and Bishop
Hans-Jochen Jaschke, auxiliary of Hamburg, Germany.

The
Pope-emeritus commented in his homily on today's gospel in which
Jesus invites his disciples to take the last place, “a place which
seems very good”, he said, “but which proves to be very bad. …
Those who in this world and throughout history are perhaps driven
ahead and arrive in first place, must be aware of the danger they are
in; they must look ever more to the Lord … they must measure up to
their responsibility for others, become those who serve, who in
reality place themselves at the feet of others, who bless and are in
turn blessed”.

“The
cross, throughout history”, he explained, “is the last place …
the Cross is no place, it is bare, nothing … and yet this “extreme
humiliation” is “the true exaltation. … Yes, Jesus is at the
level of God, because the height of the Cross is the height of God's
love, the height of His self-abnegation and His dedication to others.
Thus, this is the divine place, and we pray to God that He may enable
us to understand this ever more clearly so that we might accept with
humility, each in his own way, this mystery of exaltation and
humiliation”.